Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

No one knows exactly when or how heroin first appeared on the Seattle music scene, but the general estimate is that it happened at some point during the 1980s. “Sometime in 1982, as the music scene became bigger and a recession hit Seattle, we all noticed a huge influx of heroin and pills,” Duff McKagan wrote in his memoir. “Addiction suddenly skyrocketed within my circle of friends, and death by overdose became almost commonplace. I witnessed my first overdose when I was eighteen. I saw the first love of my life wither away because of smack and one of my bands imploded because of it. By the time I was twenty-three, two of my best friends had died from heroin overdoses.” He added, “In Seattle, heroin was fast becoming a staple in pretty much everyone’s diet—not just musicians. With beer in hand, I watched it take over the city during Ronald Reagan’s first term as president; as jobs disappeared, smack oozed into the vacuum left in people’s lives. Up to 1982, I heard about heroin but rarely saw it. Then suddenly I began to see a lot of older kids starting to use heroin openly. As more and more of my contemporaries lost their jobs, smack spread quickly. It would be everywhere by 1983.”4

Evan Sheeley said, “What was happening in Seattle, somehow during the early days of grunge, heroin entered the scene. Back in my days, when I was playing, it was pot, cocaine, alcohol. It was pretty much those three. [Acid and mushrooms were] previous to that. That was in the sixties and seventies. Later in the eighties, it was more about cocaine, alcohol, and pot. Somewhere along the line, in the mid- to later eighties, heroin crept into the scene somehow. Don’t know how, don’t know why, but, for whatever reason, it seems like that generation of musicians … certain ones unfortunately latched on to it.”

Bob Timmins, a drug counselor who was a heroin addict for sixteen years, worked with several Seattle musicians. He said the musicians he works with “are very successful, and it gives them a sense of power and control—that they’re immune and they can control their use,” and that denial makes them typical heroin addicts.5

Heroin use was on the rise in Seattle during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Heroin-related deaths increased from thirty-two in 1986 to fifty-nine in 1992, a rise of 84 percent. Heroin overdoses were at “record level” when 410 were reported at Harborview Medical Center in the first six months of 1993. However, according to a 1994 Seattle Times report, heroin use was also on the rise nationwide.6

Susan commented about heroin in the 1996 documentary Hype! “It’s just fucking heartbreaking to see how disillusioned people get, to where that escape is so sought after,” she observed. Even before heroin use had entered the Alice in Chains camp, Susan already had experience dealing with the drug because of her brother, Bruce, who was an addict.7

The event that should have had the most immediate relevance and deterrent impact on Alice in Chains and their contemporaries was Andrew Wood’s death in 1990. It didn’t.

One of the central questions of the Alice in Chains story is when, where, and how heroin entered the picture. Casual drug use had been part of the band’s recreational activities long before they signed a record deal. John Starr, Mike’s father and also a drug addict, told Mike’s biographer that it was Demri who introduced Layne to heroin: “The drugs came as a result of Layne’s connection with Demri. They did no drugs until they started touring. I loved her; her and I got along great. Mike and Layne and her had more fun than everybody else on the tour together. But she introduced Layne to heroin. Layne introduced Mike to heroin.”8

Demri’s mother, Kathleen Austin, does not dispute this claim, but she points out that she doesn’t know when or how Demri first used heroin, because her daughter never told her. “My daughter told me just about everything. My daughter told me things I didn’t want to know. But she never called me and said, ‘Hey, Mom, guess what? I used heroin last night.’ That’s something that most people don’t want other people to know.”

According to multiple sources, John Starr’s claim is accurate. Layne told Johnny Bacolas that he began using heroin during the Van Halen tour. According to Greg Prato, Bacolas said, “I asked him, ‘How did this happen?’ His exact words were, ‘Johnny, when [I] took that first hit, for the first time in my life, I got on my knees, and I thanked God for feeling good.’ From there, it just didn’t stop.”9

“He would go shoot up in his bedroom and he would come out; he would seem really relaxed and really at peace with everything,” Bacolas explained during an interview for the book. “A couple of times, I would say, ‘What’s it like? What do you feel?’ And he would just tell me, ‘Everything is really peaceful.’”